Recordings
The Queen of Spades, op. 68 |
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[Pikovaya dama] Opera in 3 acts and 7 scenes Of all addictions, gambling is the most destructive: it isolates before it brings ruin. Other may invite some measure of compassion and support, the compulsive gambler usually spirals to destitution without either. Pushkin published his powerful study on this theme in 1834 and others were not slow to see its inherent dramatic potential. Only two years later a stage adaptation appeared by Prince Alexander Shakhovskoy. But although Tchaikovsky was not the first to address himself to Pushkin´s story (Halévy and Suppé beat him to it), no rival has ever held the stage. Realising its operatic potential, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, who had been so positive a force in furthering the cause of „The Sleeping Beauty,“ had suggested the subject to Tchaikovsky´s pupil, Nikolay Klenovsky (1857-1915). But the latter was so slow to proceed that his librettist, Vasily Kandaurov, lost patience and turned to another composer. It is possible that Vsevolozhsky himself suspected that Klenovsky´s resolve was infirm and that nothing would come of it, and made the suggestion to approach Tchaikovsky´s brother Modest, in the hope, perhaps, that he could eventually interest Tchaikovsky himself in the idea. In any event Klenovsky did lose interest and in 1886 Modest put the libretto to one side, and Tchaikovsky´s enthusiasm was fired. Pushkin´s story of the corrosive effect of the hero´s growing obsession to discover the secret which will bring him riches is taut and concentrated. In its six chapters the narrative unfolds with a gripping psychological intensity all the more powerful for its understatement. Opera imposes different constraints and Modest´s libretto differs in many respects from Pushkin. In the opera Liza becomes a romantic figure who meets a melodramatic end, in the original she is the down-trodden ward of the Countess, not her grand-daughter, whose ideas are conditioned by romantic novelettes and who fastens on Hermann as a deliverer. There is no fiancé: the figure of Prince Yeletsky was written into the plot by Modest. Liza´s fate, too, is very different, for in the original she marries a pleasant enough young man, a civil servant, with a comfortable income. Hermann, for whom Tchaikovsky felt such compassion that he wept while composing the death scene, ends his days in asylum and he is an altogether colder figure than in the opera, where his love for Liza is genuine and only gradually subsumed in his obsession. The outer chapters of the Pushkin are largely preserved, though Tchaikovsky insisted on the insertion of the scene by the canal in order to ensure the contrast of a female in what would otherwise have been an exclusively male-voice act. Modest´s first libretto for Klenovsky had been
set at the time of Alexander I, but for Tchaikovsky the action of the opera was moved back
to the reign of Catherine the Great (reigned 1762-96), the era of his beloved Mozart. The
addition of a ball to open the second act and of a pastoral divertissement, as well as the
Countess´s somnolent reminiscences in the scene that follows, afforded an opportunity for
Rococo pastiche and, indeed, direct quotation. In the latter Tchaikovsky uses (one is
tempted to say, rescues) the aria, „Je crains de lui parler la nuit“ from Grétry´s
opera, „Richard Coeur-de-lion.“ But his immersion in the period did not stop there.
When he started work on the opera in January 1890 in Florence, Tchaikovsky too with him a
number of scores he had borrowed from the library of the Imperial Theatre, including
operas by Salieri, Astarita, Monsigny and Galuppi as well as two by Grétry. The opening
duet for Prilepa and Milozvor in the pastoral sounds like a conflation of Mozart´s Piano
Concerto in C, K. 503, and the String Quintet K. 406 (itself an arrangement of the C minor
Wind Serenade, K. 388), while the interlude which forms a kind of trio comes close to an
idea in „Le fils-rival,“ and opera by Dmitri Bortniansky, though to be fair
Tchaikovsky is unlikely to have known it. The ballroom scene draws on a polonaise by
Jósef Koslowski and there are also literary loans, verses by Vasily Zhukovsky, Konstantin
Batyushkov and the eighteenth-century poet Gravriil Derzhanov. When Vsevolozhsky had discussed the project it was
decided to stage opera in the forthcoming 1890-91 season, which entailed delivery of a
vocal score by May 1890. Tchaikovsky longed to throw himself into the project: „To go
away, to go away somewhere or other quickly, to see no one, to know nothing, to work, work
and work – that´s what my soul thirsts for,“ he wrote to Madame von Meck early in
January. As soon as the premiére of „The Sleeping Beauty“ was out of the way, and
other commitments were fulfilled, he left St Petersburg for Berlin where he bought himself
a ticket for Florence, arriving there on 30 January, and starting work next day. His
diaries record rapid progress: by mid-February the first two scenes had been sketched, and
then instead of tackling the ballroom scene (for the interlude Modest had suggested either
Derzhanov or a pastoral by Pyotr Karabanov on which his choice eventually fell),
Tchaikovsky turned to the scene between Herman and the Countess. As had been the case from
„Eugene Onegin“ onwards, he always addressed himself to the central dramatic moment
first, though he found its world so disturbing and emotionally exhausting that he returned
to the brighter Rococo atmosphere of the ball scene immediately on its completion a week
later. By now his work was gathering momentum and by mid-March the opera was almost
complete, save for the last scene.The last half of the month saw its completion, and the
finalisation of the vocal score. This he sent to St Petersburg on 5 April and promptly
left Florence for Rome where he began the orchestration, which occupied the next two
months. The St Petersburg premiére at the Mariinsky
Theatre on 19 December was a great success and must have sweetened what had been a bitter
autumn, for it was in early October that Nadezhda von Meck´s letter terminating their
relationship had arrived. No expense or effort was spared in the lavish production, and
the tenor Nikolay Figner, for whom the role fo Herman was created (and with whom
Tchaikovsky had a praticular emotional bond), was hailed as the hero of the evening (his
wife Medea was Liza), along with the conductor, Eduard Nápravník. Public enthusiasm ran
high (some duets and the Prince Yeletsky´s aria had to be repeated), though, as if to
show themselves unswayed by the plaudits, critical voices surfaced in the press („hasty
workmanship .... a significant step backwards ..... „Pique Dame“ is interesting in
parts, „Eugene Onegin“ charms throughout“). Only a few day later it was given in
Kiev to great acclaim and the following year it reached Moscow and Prague. The critiques
were soon forgotten and the opera launched on its international carrer, Mahler conducted
it in Vienna in 1902 and by the end ot the decade it had been staged in every major
operatic capital. The contrasts of mood and character are stronger
in „Pique Dame“ than almost any of his other operas, the resplendent Rococo world of
the ball scene (D major) is set against the claustrophobic darkness of the Countess´s
bedroom (B minor, the key of the „Pathétique“). Almost as much as thematic motives
themselves, tonality plays an important part in indicating dramatic situation. It is in the sheer quality of the musical
invention as well as its effective layout and presentation (even the first adverse
critiques were at pains to praise his mastery of the orchestra) and its directness as
musical drama (though with two suicides in the last act one can with justification say
melodrama) that „Pique Dame“ triumphs. It is the most often staged of his operas after
„Onegin,“ though that says as much for its expertly shaped dramatic structure as its
abundance and fertility of melodic ideas. It is certainly the one in which he draws most
extensively on Rococo models. („At times I thought I was living in the eighteenth
century, and that there was nothing beyond Mozart, „he wrote during his Florence stay.)
And while in „Onegin“ (and his other operas for that matter) the central character is
feminine, here it is Herman, his love, his corrosive obsession and his inability to escape
his fate, that engaged tha composer´s sympathies. Liza has none of the depth that Tatyana
possesses – her portrayal in the opera is almost two-dimensional by comparison with the
heroine of „Onegin“. There is something touching about the Countess. Perhaps in Herman
he saw something of himself, unable to escape Fate, and almost imprisoned by its
inevitability. But Herman lost his sanity and his life as the victim of his own greed,
sacrificing love in its pursuit. Tchaikovsky, himself a victim of an obsessive condition,
albeit of a completely different kind, and no stranger to the feeling that the cards were
stacked against him, betrays an imaginative compassion for a character that to most people
would be inimical but who in his hands becomes three-dimensional. That Tchaikovsky
identified so closely with him is also strangely prophetic, for only three years later his
own all-consuming passions and fears of their exposure and his subsequent disgrace were to
lead to a similar fate: Unlike his (or Pushkin´s) Herman, however, Tchaikovsky had a
generosity of feeling and a warmth that was as abundant as his melodic wealth. „Pique
Dame“ was not his last opera („Iolanta“ followed in 1891) but the public were right
to acclaim it as one of his greatest works for the stage.
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